Quality Insight: Why Can't We Be Friends?

Thoughts about working with Developers in Quality Engineering

There are a few phrases that I’m not a fan of in my day-to-day work environment:

It works on my machine.
It should work.
Was that in the acceptance criteria?
after a release… Oh, did you test it in this scenario?

In the early days of my career, the DEV / QA lines were clearly drawn. These days, I don’t hear the phrases above much. It’s been years now since a developer has gotten frustrated with a defect I found.

What changed?

Recently, I sat on a Zoom call with someone pursuing a college degree in computer science. They had questions about being in QA and I answered to the best of my experience. What was interesting was that they brought up the tension that could exist between developers and QA. I found it intriguing that someone who hadn’t gotten their first tech job knows that sometimes developers and QA can experience friction.

What’s normal?

Today, I listened in to Ministry of Testing’s Episode Eight: Exploring Quality Engineering and while I could only listen in for the first hour, a part of me wondered why there was such a drive to prove our value. Perhaps AI has us a little nervous. Maybe we’re all on edge with the current job market. And, the state of the world itself is a little tricky. Are we able to see ourselves in it?

What do we want?

A while back, I posted a random thought I’d had in the shower on LinkedIn and the reactions were intriguing. There was a lot of discussion about the word “bottleneck” itself so perhaps my wording wasn’t the best. But, what I was trying to point out is that I think more than anything, it would be nice to have someone in our lives tell us if something is off. But, to be able to point out a flaw, in my opinion, you first need to be a friend.

When I join a company, I don’t have to be a friend to everyone I meet. What I do want to communicate clearly is that I am safe. I have the absolutely terrible task of checking our software and finding the flaws. Thankfully, the people I work with consider this a blessing. I have worked in some places where it was considered a curse. I am not a QA Gatekeeper. I assess risk and inform the team of the current status. In one meeting, I remember telling everybody, “if we go in this direction, I want you to know that we are all going to hell but if that’s what everyone is okay with, then I’m willing to do that.” We laughed and made our decisions from there.

I believe that to do this, you have to earn each other’s trust. It’s scary sometimes to tell someone that something is busted. Here is what I try to do when delivering what could be frustrating news:

QA’s…

Be kind: Never belittle anyone regarding their work. I don’t care who it is. We always start from the place of “They did their best with what they had at the time.” You can be honest without being rude.

Be clear: My first mistake in my career was saying something like, “It’s borken.” I did that far too often. Hand over heart, I apologize for that. Developers need clear next steps to find bugs quickly. Don’t be incredibly vague or too verbose. Be clear and concise on what you see and report it as soon as you find it.

Be open: As I grew in my skillset, I also learned that I might be missing something when testing. If I don’t see what I expect, there could be a change that wasn’t pushed up to the pr. There could be differences in the data we’re using. There could be all kinds of scenarios that create experiences that don’t match up with what we were hoping to see. Be kind, be clear, and present your findings. A quick video call (or walk down the hall) can clear up a lot in just a few moments.

Devs…

Be patient: The QA isn’t trying to be a pain in the butt. They are trying to do their job. Hopefully, the information provides exactly what you need to make the next best decision. Better that an issue is found now instead of a client reporting it later.

Be curious: That’s why the dreaded “It works on my machine” phrase is even uttered. It’s a lack of curiosity. There’s a reason why my machine is acting weird. And, yes, last week it was because my Chrome browser was out of date. But, if that bug shows up again, we’ll both know that it has something to do with the Chrome browser and not an issue that every user is experiencing.

Be encouraging: Being a truth teller is hard. I don’t know what kind of day you’ve had and yeah, this is the fifth issue I’ve found on just one ticket. The best developers I’ve ever worked with celebrated each bug I found. And, they took part in taking responsibility when we missed a bug that went out in production. I felt bad. I tested the thing! They felt bad! They developed the thing! We felt bad together and put a fix out as fast as we could. No guilt trip required.

Circling back to the questions posted above:

What changed? I refuse to work in an environment where blame is normalized. I won’t do it. If I sense a whiff of it in the culture, I look elsewhere. When everyone takes responsibility for their work, it brings the best out of everyone. I know I speak from a place of privilege when I say this. Everyone deserves to work in this type of environment.

What’s normal? Sadly, blame is still a normal narrative in the tech community. All of us need to take responsibility for what we do. What we do affects everyone. We can make it better or make it worse. What do you want to be your normal?

What do you want? Thankfully, we can decide this for ourselves. We can keep up the Dev/QA narrative or we can decide that we’d rather write a different story: one where we work together to make our software and each other better. All it takes is just a little more work. The results are worth it.

Want to dive deeper into this conversation and others like it? Join the MOT club and add your feedback: When working with developers, how do you keep those relationships healthy?

Till next time…

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